“Antony More, sir.”
“Antonio Morio!” exclaimed Malcolm, springing from the bed, and quickly preparing to visit the dying man, whom ten minutes after he found lying upon a poor cot in the next hut.
“What can I do for you?” inquired Malcolm, seating himself beside the man.
“First send all these people from the room, as our interview must be a private one,” answered Morio, or More, as we shall hereafter call him.
Malcolm made a sign to the fisherman’s family, who withdrew from sight only to plant themselves at convenient listening-posts without.
“They say the poor young lady is saved from the wreck. Is it true?”
“Yes.”
“I’m glad to be sure about it; for if she had escaped to France, or if she had perished in the waves, I should have died and made no sign. I should have been faithful to the friend who has ruined me, even though she would have consummated that ruin in death, and offered me up the last of the holocaust of victims sacrificed to her evil passions. But now that that poor girl is thrown again upon these shores, to suffer for another’s crimes, and that I am dying, I dare not carry to the grave the secret that might save her; or face my Judge with her innocent blood on my soul!”
Malcolm bent over the dying man, and listened with suspended breath, fearing to ask a question, or to make an observation, lest he should arrest the confession that was trembling on his lips.
“The theologians are all wrong in supposing the great principal evil to be a male—it is a female. Satan is a woman—I am sure of it, and many another man must know it also. An evil woman gains a spell over a man’s senses, and then a power over his soul, that is like diabolical magic. The man may know her, scorn her, hate her, but he cannot escape from her. Sometimes he goes mad and kills her, and gets himself hanged for it, and finds freedom, purchased even at that price, an infinite relief. Such an ascendancy one fatal woman gained over me. For years I have been her dupe, her slave, her tool. She has been my god, for at her command I have broken all the laws of the Divine One—all, all! At her command I would have